IO-86 (LAPAN-A2) Amateur Radio Satellite

IO-86 (LAPAN-A2) Amateur Radio Satellite

IO-86 (LAPAN-A2) is a microsatellite of Indonesia, designed and developed by Jakarta’s National Institute of Aeronautics and Space LAPAN. It has an equatorial orbit and has an FM amateur radio transponder which is switched on as per schedule published on their Twitter page.

Weekly schedules are given and the most recent schedule posted yesterday has details for 18th to 23rd Septemeber 2023. Going through the schedule, it is seen that voice transponder is activated on Saturdays and Sundays, for a period of 25 minutes. It is marked as ‘Voice Repeater (Brazil)’. It was approximately between 5 pm to 6 pm UTC on the weekends.

IO-86 was launched in September 2015 from Sriharikota, India. In addition to the voice transponder, it has an amateur radio short text message repeater (APRS). As per the schedule on the Twitter page, it is activated on weekdays for 10 minutes, at a time of about 11 am to 12 noon UTC. It has been marked as ‘India-Indonesia’ in the schedule. With regards to the voice transponder, veteran satellite operators in this region say that it is accessible only for a short period of less than 2 minutes on weekends, that too only from the region nearer the equator. Saw a pass of IO-86 on the Argentinian Amsat webpage when I started preparing this note. But that was not at a time when the voice transponder was active. So I could not check personally. IO-86 uplink is given as 145.880/145.825 MHz and downlink as 435.880/145.825 MHz at the N2YO website. I presume that 145.825 MHz is the APRS frequency, which is the same as the APRS frequency of International Space Station. Just discussed with one of friends and he told me that he used to get IO-86 APRS years back. FM access tone for IO-86 on uplink, is given as 88.5Hz.